Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:
Sure, but you cannot say "does it refer to a local file" for a
non-absolute path.
Hmph, why not? I would expect that this would work as a valid way
$ git send-email --smtp-server=./my-phoney-smtp
to test a server substitute (perhaps for testing). The only reason
why it does not is because file_name_is_absolute() check would not
like it.
And that is the source of the problem, IMHO: there is
no way to signal "this is a command I expect to be executed" except by
using an absolute path.
Yes.
Or do you mean that we should see if $smtp_server exists in the PATH,
and if so prefer it over a network hostname?
We can certainly go in that direction, too. A new --smtp-program option
would be a cleaner way to solve it, though, as you said elsewhere.